Category: the globe

I’m Not Alone

So it was on flight SQ16 from Incheon to San Francisco that I picked up a new friend.

Maybe friend is too generous a word.

A follower? Stalker? Shadow?

I think it all started somewhere over the international date line. It gets pretty wonky up there over the Pacific.

When I got off the plane, there was someone there. With me. Only I didn’t realize just who yet.

Tuesday, as I went to work, he came along.

I say he. Really, this thing is a genderless entity, a spectre, an imaginary friend. But for the sake of ease, I’ll say he.

As I commuted to work, I finally realized he was there. In the passenger seat. He went with me into the coffee shop. He was there when I parallel parked my car. He took a seat in the conference room where I’m attending a training class.

He sits next to me. With me. On me. On my head. Wrapped around me like a blanket made of wet mud and peat moss.

The entity is jet lag. I call him JG for short.

I think you’re not supposed to talk about JG. When someone asks, the right answer is “fine! Oh I’m doing great. Yeah, no problem.”

But it’s a problem.

JG is real and JG is profound. I try to stay normal. I try to make a salient point during the workshop on data security but while I speak, JG puts cotton fluff and jello into the working parts of my brain.

JG gives me a nice outfit to wear to work, only the fabric is the leaden material found in xray rooms and dentist offices.

My shoes are made of concrete.

I lean forward and my shoulders slump so I can carry the heavy load. I straighten up again and pretend JG isn’t there. My shoulders slump once more.

JG won’t be ignored.

I turn in early to bed to try to get right, to reclaim my brain and my body and I drop easily into sleep. JG jostles me awake at 2:00 am and says “hey! Let’s play!”

I rise and have a snack and try to get something done so my day isn’t a total loss but JG robs my motivation and steals my creative will.

Instead I sit on the couch watching “Mad About You” reruns and wondering where in the hell my life has gone since Paul and Jamie examined married life in the ’90’s.

Then I hallucinate about being stuck in customs somewhere in Asia.

I shake my head from side to side to clear my etch-a-sketch of a mind and try again to focus on the television. Maybe some more food will help.

There isn’t a pill that can cure me of JG. There isn’t a quick fix remedy.

There is only time.

JG and I will be hanging out for a while. You’ll find us in aisle 6 at the grocery store. I’ll be the one standing there bewildered and trying desperately to remember what I needed to buy.

JG will be the one playing tricks in my eyes and tripping me at the ankles and making me want to lay down on the stack of ten pound bags of jasmine rice and close my eyes, just for a moment.

Until strange dreams startle me awake and I rise again to wander the world, a little lost American girl searching for another cup of Singaporean coffee (kopi) and a slice of kaya toast.








Image found on Anabolic Minds.



Eek! A Monster!

Oh, but it’s such a cute little cross eyed monster.**





Look at him all rawr with all the nose holes and the rectangular mouth.

I just want to pat his little growling head and feed him raw meat. Yes I do.

I suppose I should actually find a way to tame this little beast because he’s about to climb into my backpack so we can board an airplane.

That’s right folks, Oh Fair New Mexico is set to hit the road. Or rather, fly the skies.

This time we’re going *international*.

Whew! Very exciting times!

I’m a embarrassed to admit that in my little life, the only times I’ve been out of the US was the many occasions dancing back and forth across the border in both Juarez and Matamoros.

And of course, I spend every day at work calling every country code you can think of. I travel the globe via telephone lines, but when I was hired this was to be a non-traveling position. Ah well.

I’ve had a passport for decades and even had to renew it. But I’ve never, not once gotten that bad boy stamped.

Well that’s about to change. The Boss Man and the Big Boss Man have seen fit to put a ticket in my hand and a Bon Voyage banner across my tuchus.

Next week, I’m headed to Singapore. I’m going for work but I’m as excited as though I was having a vacation.

The Good Man was able to rearrange his schedule to come along so it should be big fun (when I’m not suffering the slings and arrows of my employer).

Actually, the work part of the trip should be fascinating too. I’m attending an event put on by one of our biggest suppliers. They are bringing local in-country reps from each of their offices across Asia. So people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, China, and so on are flying in to meet…well…me.

My company gives their company a lot of money, and I will be the senior representative in attendance, and oh I also run the entire program (i.e. I control the money) so I guess I’m worth meeting? Weird. Really, very weird.

I suppose if I’m the one in charge (a concept that should worry you endlessly) then I’d better behave myself.

That’s going to be really, really difficult.

Geez, I even went out and bought professional clothes for this event (I work in Silicon Valley, “professional clothes” is a concept no one cares about).

I am alternately nervous and so freaking excited I can hardly contain myself.

There! I’m going to be there!! Yesss!





**In case my little monster is unfamiliar to you, it’s a universal power adapter.

Singapore image found in seveal places across the web. If it’s yours, please do let me know and I’m more than happy to either take it down or give you credit.



Noise Pollution & Tasty Morsels

So there I am, Saturday morning, sleeping in a quiet bed in a quiet room at an undisclosed location somewhere near Radium Springs.

It’s the first real quiet I’ve enjoyed in six months. That was the last time I visited Southern New Mexico.

And then, literally cutting through the early morning hours comes, this:



That’s a lot of saw blades!

It’s tree trimming time at the pecan farm next door to my best friend’s place.

A piece of heavy farm equipment with six whirring saw blades cutting through hearty pecan wood sounds, well….just about as awful as you’d expect. Every once in a while they’d hit an especially green branch and the sound was the stuff of nightmares.

After the saw passed by, the trees looked like a line of military recruits with brand new flattops.



Evidently pecan trees will immediately put out new growth in the areas where they have been cut. Futher, pecan nuts flourish on new growth, so pecan farmers cut back the trees to boost production.

I gotta say, back in my formative years, I don’t remember pecan farmers cutting back trees so much. But then again, we didn’t have the robust demand for pecans from Asian markets that we see today.

From a 2011 WSJ article: “Five years ago, China bought hardly any pecans. In 2009, China bought one-quarter of the U.S. crop, and there’s no sign demand is abating.”

So farmers will do just about anything to boost production.
.
.
.
Hey, did you know that pecan trees are notorious water hogs? And right now, the drought in New Mexico is palpable.

Oh, but that’s a different story for another day.



Photos Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right column of this page. Top photo taken with my Canon Rebel, bottom photo taken with my iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.


The Gift of the Magi – In short supply

We three kings of Orient are/bearing gifts we traverse afar

So goes the lyrics of one of my all time favorite holiday songs. I belted it out with gusto during Midnight Mass through most of my formative years.

As the story goes, the Three Wise Men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh on that first Christmas, thus paving the way for BlueRay players and gift cards and a Red Ryder BB gun.

I always thought gold was the good gift in that stack. Who knows what all that other stuff was? Wasn’t a gift of frankincense and myrrh like getting a fruitcake and an ugly sweater?

Yesterday, I read with interest an article in USA Today discussing how the Boswellia tree, a scraggly tree found mostly in Ethiopia, is facing quite a sharp decline. Like 7% of trees dying off per year and new saplings not maturing into full trees.

Frankincense is the dried sap from a Boswellia tree. Cuts are made into the trunk of the tree (called stripping) and then sap flows to heal the wound. When that sap hardens (called, appropriately enough, tears), the dried frankincense is harvested from the tree and it can be burned or oils extracted for perfume.

The trees are threatened for a couple of reasons, one is that the Ethiopian government has pushed people to relocate from the highlands to the lowlands where the tree is prevalent. This puts pressure on the ecosystem. The highlanders brought cattle with them, and the cows eat saplings. Also, the grasslands are burned to make it easier to get to the trees to collect the frankincense, but that also kills saplings.

In addition, the process of cutting into the trees leaves them vulnerable to attack by longhorn beetles.

Researchers are still trying to understand if climate change is also a concern.

In all, quite a fascinating bit of understanding about that gift from the first Christmas that I’ve so often sung about but not well understood.

Of course, as I read the article I thought “I betcha these trees would grow in New Mexico.” Well sure enough, there is a man in Arizona who is growing and selling Boswellia trees and they seem to do well in Southern California, Florida and parts of Arizona.

It’s too cold here in the Bay Area, but if I was back in New Mexico, I’d totally want to see if I could grow a Boswellia tree.




The Boswellia tree




Cuts are make into the trunk of the Boswellia tree to encourage the flow of resin




Hardened frankincense, also called tears



All images from LookLex Encyclopaedia.

This week’s Theme Thursday is (appropriately enough): gift


Hablo en Google

As a native child of New Mexico, I am neither unfamiliar nor uncomfortable with the Spanish language.

That said, the Spanish I speak is a informal blend often referred to as “Spanglish”.

Un poquito English. A tiny bit Espanol.

This is both a help and a hindrance in my daily work.

I’ve had a chance to chronicle my extensive work learning the ways and means of my counterparts in EMEA.

I’ve discussed my ongoing learning curve with my coworkers and suppliers in APAC.

It was inevitable…my focus has arrived in Latin America.

Right now I work mostly with Brazil and Mexico.

Since I have zero Portuguese and my Spanish cannot be considered appropriate for business, I have come to rely on Google Translate to do my daily job. I was using BabelFish for a while, but I’ve come to realize that Google Translate is actually a lot more accurate and it handles colloquialisms fairly well.

Even so, it’s not perfect. I really have to watch how I craft my emails. I love the English language and I love to play it fast and loose with grammar and word use. This does not always work well in translation.

While Google will properly translate the words, the meaning gets lost and I will usually get either an “I’m sorry?” or a simple “Que?” from my friends in Latin America.

Ya can’t just throw down a “This ain’t my first rodeo!” or “Put up or shut up!” and expect that’s going to come across the way you meant it.

To make matters more difficult, I’m not only working with people in my own company, but I’m also negotiating with suppliers. Now to my mind, negotiating is a fine art. Language and word choice can be everything.

So I feel a little hamstrung trying to work a deal in another language that I can’t speak. (wait, does “hamstrung” translate?)

For Mexico, I have a buddy in my organization who is originally from Mexico City. So far he’s been willing to be a translator and negotiator on my behalf and he’s doing a great job. I thank him profusely every day.

No such luck finding a native Portuguese speaker who is friendly to my cause.

So it’s off to Google Translator and hope for the best.

Actually, I’ve been shocked at how well I’ve actually been able to complete my work. Here I am cutting multimillion dollar deals with just an online translator and a bit of attitude and somehow, it works. I am able to have Legal review in each country to be sure it all stays the way I negotiated it, and that helps me stay out of trouble.

I love language and I love using language to be persuasive at the negotiation table.

So working through an online translator feels like I’m roping a wild cow in that proverbial rodeo and doing so with one hand tied behind my back.

I’m gonna guess that didn’t translate well.


———————————————


I Speak Google


Como un niño nativo de Nuevo México, no soy ni familiar ni incómodo con la lengua española.

Dicho esto, el español que hablan es una mezcla informal a menudo se refiere como “Spanglish”.

A little Inglés. Un pequeño poco Espanol.

Esto es una ayuda y un obstáculo en mi trabajo diario.

He tenido la oportunidad de trabajar una crónica extensa aprender las maneras y los medios de mis colegas en la región EMEA.

He hablado de mi curva de aprendizaje continuo con mis compañeros de trabajo y proveedores en Asia-Pacífico.

Era inevitable … mi enfoque ha llegado a América Latina.

Ahora mismo trabajan sobre todo con Brasil y México.

Desde que tengo cero portugués y mi español no puede ser considerado apropiado para el negocio, he llegado a depender de Google Translate para hacer mi trabajo diario. Yo estaba usando BabelFish por un tiempo, pero me he dado cuenta de que Google Translate es en realidad mucho más preciso y se maneja bastante bien coloquiales.

Aún así, no es perfecto. Tengo que ver cómo me artesanía mis correos electrónicos. Me encanta el idioma Inglés y me gusta jugar rápido y libremente con la gramática y el uso de la palabra. Esto no siempre funciona bien en la traducción.

Mientras que Google correctamente traducir las palabras, el significado se pierde y yo por lo general se convierte en un “lo siento?” o simple “Que?” de mis amigos en América Latina.

Ya no puede lanzar una “Este no es mi primer rodeo!” o “poner o callarse” y esperar que va a venir a través de la forma que quería decir.

Para hacer las cosas más difíciles, estoy trabajando no sólo con la gente de mi propia empresa, pero también estoy negociando con los proveedores. Ahora en mi opinión, la negociación es un arte. Elección de la lengua y la palabra puede ser todo.

Así que me siento un poco paralizado tratando de trabajar mucho en otro idioma que no puedo hablar. (Tiempo de espera, significa “paralizado” traducir?)

Para México, tengo un amigo en mi organización que es originario de la Ciudad de México. Hasta ahora ha estado dispuesto a ser un traductor y negociador en mi nombre y que está haciendo un gran trabajo. Le doy las gracias profusamente todos los días.

No hubo suerte para encontrar un hablante nativo portugués, que es amigo de mi causa.

Por lo que es de al traductor de Google y esperar lo mejor.

En realidad, he sido sorprendido por lo bien hecho, he podido completar mi trabajo. Aquí estoy haciendo tratos multimillonarios con sólo un traductor en línea y un poco de actitud y de alguna manera, funciona. Yo soy capaz de tener opinión legal en cada país para asegurarse de que todas las estancias de la forma en que lo negociado, por lo que me ayuda a mantenerme fuera de problemas.

Me encanta el idioma y me encanta usar el lenguaje para ser persuasivo en la mesa de negociación.

Así que trabajar a través de un traductor en línea se siente como que estoy cuerda una vaca salvaje en ese rodeo proverbial y hacerlo con una mano atada a la espalda.

Voy a suponer que no se tradujo así.






Image by Jakub Krechowicz and used royalty free from stock.xchng.